The following information on The Cherokee Path is used with
the permission of Roy Vandergrift, III and William S. Taylor, Sr.
They presented this information to the South Carolina
Genealogical Society's Twenty-Eight Annual Meeting on October 10,
1998. Additions have been made from Roy Vandergrift's presentation at the
2002 Annual Meeting. Thank you Mr. Vandergrift and Mr. Taylor for allowing this
information to be placed on the SCGS Web Page.

Beginnings

Trails, fairly unobstructed walkways, were created by
migratory animals linking water and food sources which they visited on a regular
basis. Humans used animal trails and developed them over periods of time.
Indians/Native Americans/"Natural People" developed trails/paths/roads from camp
to camp or to link trade or resource sites.

When Europeans arrived, networks of trails already existed.
These, along with the streams (rivers), were the travel, trade and communication
routes in SC. Several of the more important paths/trails in Carolina were...

The Occanoochee Trail/Virginia Path from the Augusta area
(Silver Bluff) to the Columbia area (the Fall Line) going into North Carolina.
The invading army of DeSoto crossed into Carolina near Silver Bluff and was
guided to Cofitacheque (Camden) in 1540 along this trail. Around 1564 several
stranded English sailors hiked from Texas to Florida - hoping to find French
Protestants. Finding none, they then hiked along the Ocanoochee Trail
through Georgia & SC almost to Canada where they caught a ship home.

The Cherokee Path from Keowee (near Clemson) running
southeast along the Saluda River to the Columbia area and then along the Santee
River to the low country.

The trail from Savannah, Georgia going over the coast
(Highway 17) into North Carolina and Virginia.

Invasion and Settlement c. 1670

In 1670 the English came to Carolina from England and
Barbados. By 1715 adventurous Carolinians had explored into Alabama and North
Carolina. The Indians of the League of the Iroquois roamed up and down what
became the "Great Philadelphia Wagon Road" to trade or wage war. The
Saluda Indians apparently came from Shawnees in Pennsylvania and were headed to
St. Augustine, but stopped at and old mound site on the river that bears their
name - Saluda.

Travel along the Cherokee Path - c.
1700-1759

For about 40 years the Path was used by people on foot and by
pack animals. The Path followed either the higher ridges by rivers or flat land
and avoided any obstacle that slowed travel. By 1715 one million animal skins
had come to Charleston and two "armies" had traveled along part of the Path on
the way to North Carolina to fight the Indians. The Yamessee (Yemassee) War,
1715-16 was a serious threat to the colonists, so the Carolinians waged a
successful war of extermination. After that war Carolina was basically free of
all but the tiny remnants of tribes, except of course, the Cherokee who probably
hunted all the way down to Eutaw Springs - above Moncks Corner. Captain George
Chicken had led an expedition to secure peace with them c. 1715. The "Cherokee
Path" is first mentioned by the Commons House in 1717.

The Township Plan for SC

In 1730 a plan was developed to establish some ten townships
along the major roads and waterways across the colony - Charleston would be
protected. "Arrow catchers" were brought in from the German states, Switzerland,
France, Wales, Virginia, and Ireland. The Path ran through Amelia township and
Saxa Gotha Township, both along the west bank of the Santee, Congaree and Saluda
Rivers.

1730-1761

By 1737 the Path was a wagon road to the Congarees from
Charleston. This road was extended beyond the Congarees by 1748, and it was the
main road with the trees cleared but with no bridges. By 1759 the Path was the
wagon road to Fort Prince George. Regulations mandated that the road be thirty
feet wide with loaded wagons keeping to the right of the road's center.
See George Hunter's Map and information on Hunter's Great Survey of 1730.

This powder horn dates from c. 1760 and was etched by
an officer in Grant's Expedition against the Cherokees.
It correctly shows the locations of places, and the scale is accurate.

From Keowee to the Middle Towns and
Over-Hill Towns

From Keowee, the Path fanned out into the mountains. The
routes usually followed streams and valleys - going to Clayton, Georgia and up to
Franklin and Murphy in North Carolina and across into Tennessee to the Cherokee
towns and Fort Loudoun. Captain Demere marched 200 men from Keowee following the
southern route to Fort Loudoun in 1756 in only 10 days, which was considered to
be a fast trip.

The Cherokee War 1759-1761

When the Cherokee War broke out in 1759-1761, in the middle
of the French and Indian War, three armies marched and camped along the
Path/Road from Charleston to Granby, 96, and Keowee, where Fort Prince George
had been built in 1756. Governor Lyttleton, colonel Montgomery and Colonel Grant
had armies of up to 2300 men with animals, carts, and wagons. Fort Prince George
was the staging area for assaults against the Cherokee in what is now North
Carolina - along the Little Tennessee River - highway #441 between Clayton,
Georgia an d Franklin, North Carolina. A path led from Keowee/Fort Prince George
to Fort Loudoun, which had been constructed by South Carolina troops in 1756.
The Cherokee intrigued the fort to surrender and then murdered over 20 of the
defenders on the march back to Fort Prince George.

Fort Loudoun was build by Carolinians on the side of a hill at the request of
the Cherokee so they could see inside. The fort served to keep the Cherokees
neutral in the French and Indian War and to keep the French away. The fort was a
ten (10 day hike to Fort Prince George.

The Later Years of the Cherokee Path
1761-2002

Governor James Glen, after visiting Fort Prince George, led
an army of 500 militia and soldiers and met with the Cherokee and signed a
treaty at Saluda Old Town in July, 1755. In the late 1750's and 1760's the
Carolina Back Country filled with immigrants, and more roads were opened. The
struggle between the Back Country and Charleston again came to the forefront,
with Charleston refusing to share political and judicial power with the
Upcountry folk. The Regulator Movement resulted and a small government
"army" came up from Charleston and engaged a militia force of Regulators on the
Path at the edge of present day Saluda County.

During the War for American Independence, troops from both
sides marched the Path, long since called a "road". The "Ride of Emily Geiger"
in 1781 is a story about a young woman who carried a "British are Coming!"
message to General Sumter from General Greene. Her grave and home are in the
area south of Columbia.

The Path was renamed by sections: from Moncks Corner to the
St. Matthews area was called the "Road to the Congarees", State Road and "Old
Number Six" Road; State Road today in West Columbia; Mineral Springs Road
between US #1 and US #378; Old Cherokee Road through Lexington, close to Lake
Murray; and Old Cherokee Trail through Saluda County, paralleling the Saluda
River.

In many places today the Path is still in use, and in other
places it lies beside the road anywhere from a few inches to ten feet deep and
around 25 feet wide with a flat bottom.

Native Americans (Indians) - Close to the
Path: Then and Now

DeSoto encountered Indians in May, 1540 when he crossed the
Congaree River, and Captain Juan Pardo also met them some 27
years later when his company walked up from the Beaufort area in
1566-67. When the English/Barbadians arrived in 1670 and trade
began with the interior, there may have still been around 15,000
natives in SC - down from the approximately 30,000 at the
beginning of the 16th century.

This state has been inhabited for thousands of years by
people who are now, divided, classified, and identified by
archaeologists/anthropologists as the: Paleo period; Archaic
period; Woodland period; Mississippian period - these people are
the mound builders from about 1,000 years ago, whose mounds have
been recycled by every group afterwards until erosion or
purposeful destruction have erased them; many mounds still dot
the southeast, including the site close to the Cherokee Path on
Lake Marion, used as a fort in the War for American Independence
- and the Contact and the Post Contact Period.

To mention some is to exclude some of these "post
contact" peoples, but...the Chicora Indian met the Spaniards
on the beach in 1520's near Georgetown, and knew the French in
the Beaufort area c. 1562 and the Spaniards in the same place
until c. 1588.

the Chicora fought the English in the late 17th century and
were last heard from with the Catawba Indians in 1743. The
Chicora are still here - about 450 of them living in the northern
coastal region of the state.

the Cherokee, our name for them, not theirs, probably
hunted down to the Eutaw Springs area, they being the dominant
people force in the state. They were slowly pushed from the
state: the 1755 Treaty at Saluda Old Town; the 1777 Treaty at
DeWitt's Corner; and 1816 when they gave away the last vestige of
the mountains in SC. The Cherokee have almost always been
friendly, trusting and overly dependent on the English
colonist/Americans. The Cherokee are happy to entertain tourists
in nearby Cherokee, NC.

The Congaree tribe lived west of the Congaree River in the
Cayce area - across from Columbia. They traded with the early
settlers at Fort Congaree c. 1720.

The Edistos (more correctly the Kussos or Coosabos, since
they lived between the Edisto River and the headwaters of the
Ashley River). This tribe is alive today and lives in the 4 Hole
Swamp area.

The Saluda Indians came down from Pennsylvania in the late
1600's, probably to trade with the Spaniards in Florida. They
stopped on the Chickawa River - the Cherokee word that means
"River of Corn", but after the Yamassee War they
returned to join the Shawnee in Pennsylvania, but left their name
"Saluda" attached to the river-which does not mean
"River of Corn". While here, they lived at a place
called "Saludy Old Town" - an abandoned mound site.

Their may be many more tribes, then and now, but these may
be associated with the Path.

the Yamassee Indians came to Carolina after ill treatment
by the Spaniards in Florida only to suffer under the Anglos,
which they did not long endure. The Yamassee War of 1715 came
close to destroying the colony. The Goose Creek area was attacked
- around St. James Church until the Indians and their towns were
destroyed. The survivors joined other tribes.